Penn in the News

After an ugly e-mail got posted to the Internet and went viral, sparking tensions at the University of Maryland, its president took an unusual step Friday afternoon: He turned to social media to open up the debate, writing frankly of his own struggle with the issue and asking others on campus to weigh in. Students answered with alacrity — and a lot of anger, in a conversation that continued long after he signed off.

Alex Edmans of the Wharton School is cited for a collaborative study titled “Sports Sentiment and Stock Returns.”

To some people in higher education, "MOOC" has become a punch line. The initial hype around so-called massive open online courses was so intense — promising a "tsunami" of change, according to one New York Times columnist, and a shuttering of most traditional colleges, according to one of the trend’s pioneers — that the reality was doomed to fall short.

Stefan Al of the School of Design comments on city planning in Philadelphia.

Marwan Kraidy of the Annenberg School for Communication says, “Satire really reflects the power, the political balance of power in a society, more than any kind of cultural taboo.”

Douglas Smith of the Perelman School of Medicine suggests the best way for medical professionals to help traumatic brain injury patients.

Fewer than 4 in 10 college presidents express confidence in the financial sustainability of their institutions over the next decade. Less than a third agree that sexual assault is prevalent on American college campuses, and just 6 percent say it is prevalent at their own institution.

Matthew Levendusky of the School of Arts & Sciences is cited for his research on partisan media.

Kent Smetters of the Wharton School talks about the similarities between stress tests for banks and restaurant health inspections.

Rutgers University and its largest faculty union have reached a tentative four-year agreement that, if approved by members, would include across-the-board raises and require the university to declare a fiscal emergency before freezing salaries. The agreement with the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers, announced Thursday in messages sent to faculty, would cover nearly 4,700 of its members.